A good library should let you go time-traveling. Time-traveling? Yup, time-traveling. Any time you pick up a book about paleontology, or anthropology, or history, you're holding a time machine. My library has hundreds of time machines. With the right choice, you can be whisked to
. . . a prehistoric landscape where early hominids roamed . . .
. . . lands of long-extinct mammals ...
. . . the world of the dinosaurs . . .
. . . long-gone seas dominated by fishes and other strange things . . .
. . . or remote times inhabited by a whole array of other fossil critters, some of which look like nothing you've ever seen before.
You can even revisit the entire grand, sweeping history of life on Earth.
Being interested in fossils naturally leads into being interested in a few other subjects. Geology is one; evolutionary theory is another.
Every now and then, I can take a more tangible time-trip, and bring back a few mementos. For example, in April 1998 I and some friends went to DinoFest '98 in Philadelphia, and also to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I brought back a number of rather good photographs from both places.
